"Where there are friends, there is wealth," the ancient Roman playwright Plautus said. But where there are Facebook friends, there is a wealth of fail. Unlike tweets on Twitter, Facebook statuses can stretch to 63,206 characters, leaving plenty of room for mistakes.

Whether it's because the poster doesn't realize that what they're writing isn't a private message or they've left their laptops open to passersby (or worse, parents) there is plenty of unintentional hilarity or, for some, schadenfreude.

Trouble at work was, perhaps, inevitable since the site's launch. Like crime, sitting at home on a sick day and posting away or trashing a boss in an expletive-laden status update, doesn't pay. Facebook likes are protected by the Fourth Amendment, according to a recent ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. But freedom of expression only goes so far. A fair share of firings have been the result of posts on the site. Just last month an assistant manager at a Walmart in Hamburg, New York, was fired for posting a photo of Muslim customers and a racist rant against them on his profile page.

This sort of self-imposed stupidity extends to the home front as well. Facebook use correlates to divorce and other relationship issues, so says a study from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. And evidence of cheating gleaned from the social-networking site has been in many a divorce proceeding.

Even Facebook's founder hasn't been immune to blushworthy Facebook-related moments. Mark Zuckerberg has had to defend Facebook to hordes of angry users who have had trouble understanding and accessing privacy settings, but he probably never expected one of them to be his own sister and Facebook's former head of marketing Randi Zuckerberg. She was incensed that one of the photos she posted of her family, including Zuck himself, had made its way to the public, little realizing that the default privacy setting to let friends of friends see photos was responsible.

Facebook itself has gotten criticism for what it allows users to post. While it’s had some controversy after removing photos of breastfeeding, it’s just allowed users to post videos of decapitations and other violent events.

1
No Reservations

A North Dakota branch of the barbecue chain Famous Dave's got some notoriety when its employees posted a photo that was derogatory to Native Americans on Facebook. During a weekend when the United Tribes International Pow Wow was in town, servers made and posed for a photo with a sign that derided Native Americans for not leaving tips. The posting wasn't met by laughs by the Pow Wow attendees and certainly not by the owner of Famous Dave's, Dave Anderson, a member of the Choctaw and Ojibwe tribes who has served as Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs. The employees were promptly fired.

2
Zuck Looks Like a Sucker

Khalil Shreateh, a Palestinian security researcher, discovered a vulnerability that let any Facebook user post to another user's wall. After repeated attempts to alert the company and collect the bug bounty it offers, he went straight to the top, posting on Mark Zuckerberg's wall. Facebook noticed and fixed the bug but didn't give Shreateh the $500 bounty. Sympathetic parties started an Indiegogo page and raised thousands for him; Facebook issued an apology.

3
Age Is Just a Number

Facebook users are required to be 13 years old but some users lie about their age to create accounts. One girl met the Facebook age requirement but was flirting with guys under the guise of a 16-year-old. Her dad took to YouTube to set the record straight about her age and to inform her Facebook friends she wouldn't be returning to the site.

4
Dr. No

Health care providers don't spend a lot of face-to-face time with patients so they're starting to spend more Facebook time with them on hospital websites. One Ob-Gyn in St. Louis, Missouri, got a little too personal with patient info when she complained about an (unnamed) perpetually late patient on St. John's Mercy Medical Center's Facebook page for expectant mothers and posted, "May I show up late for her delivery?"

6
Mann Up

Students at the prestigious Horace Mann School in Manhattan created Facebook pages where they slammed the school's Women's Issues Club, bragged about beating women, and one student claimed to have "banged" a teacher "in [the] music dept. bathroom." When these students' Facebook activities were discovered by a teacher, their wealthy and often famous parents came to their defense, arguing teachers had invaded the students' privacy. Disciplinary action and bad publicity rapidly followed.

7
Sex and Violence

Facebook may be free but users don’t have boundless freedom. There are rules about what content images and videos can contain. Shots of sexual activity, photos of poached endangered animals, and snaps of sleeping people with things drawn on their faces are all banned. But if you come across a video of a beheading or the bloody aftermath of a violent event, you can share it, according to a new and controversial update to Facebook’s posting policy.

About the Author

Chandra is senior features writer at PCMag.com. She got her tech journalism start at CMP/United Business Media, beginning at Electronic Buyers' News, then making her way over to TechWeb and VARBusiness.com. Chandra's happy to make a living writing, something she didn't think she could do and why she chose to major in political science at Barnard Co... See Full Bio

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